The Way of the Warrior

by Diane Carey

  Sisko waved Kira back. With the heavy Klingon blade he cut his own hand and let the carnelian drops fall beside thistle-colored beads of Martok's blood on the tabletop.

  He passed the knife to Kira, plagued only by a lingering twinge of gentlemanliness that didn't like the idea of her having to do this. She was a soldier, though, for many years longer than he had been, for she had started young. While he was enjoying the comforts of Federation-stable peace, Kira had grown up below on the planet of Bajor, fighting a day-by-day trench war for her freedom against the Cardassian occupation. She could handle one more cut.

  She took a hack out of her palm, and her anger came through. With simmering wrath she smeared her blood on the table beside theirs, then looked up with an are-you-satisfied glare.

  Martok bent over the blood and examined it, waiting for it to change shape, revert to metallic orange as the disembodied part of a changeling would. It didn't. It remained blood, spread slowly across the glassy tabletop, and mingled.

  Relief clearly washed over him that otherwise a Klingon would tend to hide. He sat down and visibly let the tension go.

  "Now that that's over," Sisko prodded as he sat, and motioned for Kira to sit also. He wanted Martok to finish the sentence.

  Martok slumped back in his chair like a perverted Santa Claus waiting to hold children on his lap and bite their heads off.

  "We've been sent here," he began, "to fight alongside our Federation allies against the Dominion."

  Dominion…the Founders. Odo's people, a civilization existing with such bizarre bodily forms that physics no longer applied to them. They were the new enemies of the Federation, of the Klingons, of anyone living on this side of the natural tunnel called the wormhole. In a matter of moments anyone could go from here to a quadrant of the galaxy tens of thousands of light-years away—otherwise inaccessible. Meaning, of course, that the Dominion could come through also.

  And they wanted to. With their attack dogs, the Jem'Hadar, leading the way, most likely. The only question had become the cruelest. When?

  Suddenly, as he sat here staring at one of the rarest sights he'd ever seen—a frightened Klingon—Sisko was struck with the inevitability of war. When were the Founders coming? They already had spies here. It was sorcery to get used to the idea of not trusting chairs and carpets.

  The Klingons, if Martok spoke for all of them and hadn't today become a renegade, wanted to stand fast against the Dominion any way they could, even if it meant coming in here to broaden the width of the castle gate.

  "I appreciate the gesture," Sisko told the general. "But I'm not sure it's necessary."

  Martok was ready for that. "The Klingon High Council thinks it is."

  "Our communications relay in the Gamma Quadrant hasn't detected any signs of Jem'Hadar activity for quite some time. They seem to be giving the wormhole a wide berth."

  "They will come," Martok said. "And when they do, we will be ready for them."

  CHAPTER 4

  "GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO my haberdashery. May I interest you in some of Earth's Roman leg greaves? I appropriated them from a rather excitable antiques dealer who passed through last month. And may I say, there's nothing more elegant for an upwardly mobile warrior than attire from one of the most successful imperial forces of all time—"

  "We have no interest in your wares, tailor."

  The Klingon spat the word tailor as if it were an insult.

  What a shame. No appreciation for artisanship.

  Deep Space Nine's local Cardassian peered up at the two rather wide-framed Klingons and smiled his most saccharined smile.

  "Very well…then what can I do for you?"

  "Your name is Garak?"

  He bowed in a small way. "So you can read the sign. Imagine that. Such intellect."

  "You share this station with Starfleeters," the ugly one said, "yet you are an enemy alien."

  "Ah, ah." Garak raised a scolding finger. "Cardassia is not, properly speaking, at war with the United Federation of Planets. Not yet, anyway. Would you gentlemen like to have your armor taken in? Perhaps a little under the arms and around the thighs. You both look a little gaunt. May I have your names, please, for the invoice?"

  "I am Drex, second officer of—"

  "Fool!" the other one snapped in Klingon. "You tell him your name?"

  Garak settled one hand on his hip and waited. The Klingon language was particularly unmusical and it had been a long time since he'd used it, but this could be instructive.

  These two would last about four minutes in the intelligence service, so quick were they to believe that only Klingons had the muscles or the armor or honorability or whatever it took to speak Klingon.

  "He is a nothing," Drex told his friend. His mate. His excuse for a compatriot. Whatever they were to each other. Was there a word for that?

  "In any case," Garak interrupted, "I can certainly sell you some new clothing. I should think you'd be embarrassed walking around like that. The 'indomitable warrior' look is out this season."

  "Make him an offer!" the one with the long mustache said. "Tell him he can have anything you want to tell him. But get it over with! I would rather just kill him and take what we need from his computer."

  "Shut up, Ruktah. Any changes in this station's armaments in the past months will be new in that computer. We need his access codes. If we kill him, we'll be put off the station."

  "All right, all right. But if he smiles at me one more time I'll strangle him and his mother!"

  Garak watched as they snarled at each other. Without even expecting to, he had learned what they wanted. The station's condition. Weapons. Klingons were so easy.

  "Well?" he prickled. "Have you decided? Let me guess—you need medieval jousting helmets to cover those faces. I don't blame you. Use clothing to mask your worst features, I always say. I happen to have those right over—"

  Drex charged the three steps between them and pasted Garak up against the shop's computer console. "Name your price, tailor! Share with us what you share with your keepers on this station! Give us the way into the main memory bank!"

  "Oh, I would," Garak choked, "but there's a problem."

  "What problem?"

  "Well, you see, I just don't like you."

  "You don't like Klingons?"

  "Oh, no, I can live with Klingons. They huff and puff and rush in where they're not wanted, but I don't mind them. I just don't like you."

  Drex inhaled and drew back a hand to throttle him with, but Ruktah grabbed him by the wrist guard.

  "Not now!" the other one growled in Klingon. "We can get it somewhere else. Martok gave us more sources than this boiled Cardassian noodle."

  Lips quivering with fury, Drex managed to control himself. And what a sight it was to see.

  Slowly, as his big hands trembled with rage, he let go of Garak.

  "Thank you so much," Garak said through a crushed throat. "I appreciate your pressing my collar. Now I don't have to do that. This Tholian silk, you know—"

  "Animal," Ruktah croaked at Garak as he dragged Drex toward the exit.

  Drex shook his companion's hand off and glared at Garak. "Useless animal."

  "Do come again," Garak called. "Tell all your charming friends. I'm open until oh-six-hundred!"

  Weapons updates. Station details about changes in armaments. Whatever they wanted and whyever they wanted it, this couldn't be in his best interest, Garak pondered as the smell of them began to dissipate.

  "Well, they're obviously not just on shore leave," he sighed, and tried to breathe evenly so his heart would slow its thunderous pounding.

  "Memory banks…memory banks…should be simple enough," he uttered as he sat at his computer console.

  He began to tap in a series of codes, data, and bank file accesses, as well as he could remember them. He would be able to get everything he needed, or at least enough to satisfy the Klingons, within an hour or so.

  Then all he had to do was get those two prehistoric vandals to
come back here, instead of rifling some other poor slob who would have to tell them everything in order to stay alive.

  * * *

  Trill public baths had quite a reputation that went beyond sensuality and uninhibitedness and into just plain comfort. In a galaxy that could offer almost anything, comfort became a simple pleasure.

  People talked, laughed, splashed, swam, and their sounds echoed placidly through the large open space.

  In one of the dozen steam rooms flanking the main bathing area, behind delectable hanging tapestries, Kira sat on a bench and tried to enjoy the moist heat, but the comfort wasn't sinking in. She didn't want to be here.

  "There you are," a voice cut into her thoughts.

  Dax came toward her, wearing a flimsy garment called a kfta or takfa or kifata or something. Kira found herself fixated on the word and had a fleeting thought of going to the tailor's shop and asking Garak what the thing was called. On either arm, Dax had a male Trill, and she looked particularly elegant striding among her own people. They all had that same look of diffidence.

  "We've been looking all over for you," she said. "Malko here just gave me an amazing massage. I'm sure if you ask nicely he'd be willing to do the same for you."

  Malko smiled to prove he would.

  Kira didn't hide her sneer. "No, thanks."

  "Why?" Dax persisted.

  Kira lowered her chin. "Because Malko isn't real. He's a puppet made of holographic light and replicated matter."

  Dax sighed, frustrated. To Malko and his counterpart she said, "Boys, can you wait outside?"

  The two shrugged, not programmed to make any visitor feel bad, and strolled away.

  Kira kept her gaze fixed on Dax. "Afraid I hurt their 'feelings'?"

  "You really should try to get into the spirit of things," Dax said milkily as she sat down. "People come from all over Trill to visit the Hoobishan baths."

  "And if I'm ever on Trill, I'll visit them too. But we're not on Trill, and this isn't the Hoobishan baths. It's a holosuite. Nothing here is real."

  "And?"

  Melancholy and preoccupied, Kira sighed. "I'm sorry, Dax. I just feel…silly."

  "Good. That's what a holosuite's for. To have a good time. All you have to do is relax and use your imagination."

  "I guess I don't have much of an imagination." Kira didn't mention that no amount of bathing or steaming or Malko could make her forget they were on a station in space that was overloaded with Klingons.

  "Of course you do," Dax told her patiently. She knew. "Everyone does. Didn't you used to play make-believe when you were a kid?"

  "Yes. I used to make believe that all the Cardassians would stop killing Bajorans and just go away."

  Dax gazed at her. The smile left her face and eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

  "No, I'm the one who's sorry. I guess I've never gotten much use out of my imagination. I mean, look at me! You planned a fun evening for us and all I can do is sit here and worry about Klingons."

  "You can worry about them tomorrow," Dax said. "From what I hear, they aren't going anywhere. As for your underdeveloped imagination, I prescribe a strict regime of exercise…starting immediately."

  Kira kept looking up at her as if she could catch the enthusiasm like a virus. But it guttered. The smile she forced up was fake. Lying around was still just lying around, and a person could only take so much of it when things were going on elsewhere, even if it was pleasant lying around.

  "All right," she forced out. "I'll give it a try."

  "That's all I ask." Dax stood up. "Come on. Malko couldn't have gotten far."

  Kira got to her feet also. If he did, she thought, then he'd better know Klingon pressure points.

  The Promenade was markedly quiet. Activity here, activity there, a few shoppers braving the imposing Klingons who meandered about with fake casualness in groups of two or three. The fact that they moved in twos and threes was itself unsettling. Such grouping was obviously forced, planned to appear haphazard.

  And they rarely stopped. They walked, paused, then wandered on, like sentries on watch.

  For what were they watching?

  Sipping a cup of coffee, Odo was aware of every Klingon presence within eyeshot from where he sat at the Replimat. It was a good place to keep surveillance over what was happening.

  Across from him, Garak was enjoying a full meal.

  "Fascinating," Garak said between bites. "So both the cup and the liquid are merely extensions of your own body?"

  "That's correct. And if I want to, I can even drink the liquid, reabsorb it, and produce new 'coffee' in the cup." Odo wanted to stay here without attracting attention, so entertaining Garak was as good a way as any. He took a pretend swallow of the coffee, then held out the cup to Garak, showing him that the coffee was refilled. "This way I can give the illusion that I'm sharing the dining experience."

  "Very thoughtful." Garak did a poor job of showing his interest. He was no more interested than he was a tailor.

  "So," Odo went on, "perhaps you'd like to tell me what's bothering you?"

  Garak paused with a fork halfway to his lips. "Why do you think there's something wrong?"

  "Because you're almost done with your meal. It usually takes you twice as long to eat your breakfast."

  Within the Cardassian goggles of bone around his eyes, Garak blinked. "Does it?"

  "In my experience," Odo went on, "most mornings you're more interested in talking than eating."

  "Maybe I'm just hungry today."

  Lies.

  Odo couldn't blame Garak for being on edge, considering the presences added to the station's complement, but Garak was not a simple individual with simple purpose and he wasn't easily intimidated.

  Gradually Odo's thoughts turned back to his own problems. Why was he plied with guilt today? He had won the game, but the drill had been a failure. He had too easily evaded the troops and captured a hostage. And even a changeling couldn't look at an object and tell if it was another changeling hiding there.

  At least he couldn't.

  He knew these people, these Federation citizens, took him as coldhearted and withdrawn, and perhaps that's what drove him to sit among them despite the urge to cloister himself. Or more—he responded to their acceptance of him. Deep-running feelings stirred in him.

  Or was it guilt? He fought bitterly against feeling responsible for what the Dominion was trying to do, for the actions of other changelings, but it was hard. They were committing immoral acts. Their attempts at conquest were heinous, and he told himself over and over again that those attempts had nothing to do with him. He had learned from the Federation that there was no "group" responsibility any more than there were "group" rights. The idea that someone who looked like him could commit a crime and he would be somehow responsible—absurd! He fought to remain above that.

  It was part of what he liked about the Federation. They didn't buy into that. If all the changelings were murderous thugs—and well they might be—the Federation would never take it out on him. Some individuals might, but the law never would.

  But since he couldn't shake the guilt, could it be that he was failing to live up to Federation standards? Was his identification with race too strong?

  Perhaps his guilt was of another color—should he have made the sacrifice of personal identity and stayed with the Founders, as they asked him to? If they were a collective consciousness as well as a collective physical form, perhaps he could have infused his ideals among them and made a difference. Or would he have been a drop in the ocean, lost completely?

  He knew the Federation would never order him to lose himself in the mass, but perhaps he could still do it. Maybe it wasn't too late.

  A chance to divert an entire civilization from goals of conquest… after all, he had been sent out to learn and bring back his perceptions. Instead of handing over what he had learned, he had stayed here, among unlike beings with principles the same as his own.

  He didn't want to go. If he w
as wrong and merely became a drop in the ocean, then Deep Space Nine would have lost its only changeling. Life for him had been markedly better since Starfleet had taken over the station, and he felt a devotion to these people. They needed him to help man the fort and provide a glimpse into the talents of the enemy.

  It wasn't much of a reason to stay, but he clung to it. He wanted to stay. Principles were everything.

  Across the table, Garak indulged in a heavy breath, then asked, "Tell me, Odo, have you heard any news from Cardassia lately?"

  Glad to be released from his thoughts, Odo said, "Not since they sealed their borders."

  "Well, I have. And, frankly, I don't like what I've been hearing. Rumors of uprisings, civil disturbances—all very alarming."

  "I didn't know you still have friends inside the Empire."

  Garak rolled those animated eyes. "One or two. But now I can't even get through to them. I'm worried…with the destruction of the Obsidian Order and the threat of the Dominion, these are unsettling times for Cardassia."

  Gazing at him to find the layers beneath the presented surface, Odo sensed a touch of fear in Garak. Yes, Garak was hard to scare when action occurred, but this unknown, undefined threat was more frightening certainly than hard ordnance and clear enemies. Garak didn't know any more than Odo did what would come next. With the Cardassian Gestapo out of power, someone else soon would be in power.

  Still staring at the Klingons out on the Promenade, Odo said, "They're unsettling times for everyone. But if I hear anything, I'll let you know. Excuse me a moment."

  Something reliably concrete had just popped up.

  In the Promenade, two Klingons had stopped a citizen of the station, a fellow named Morn, and they were harassing him, rifling his duffel bag, pressing him for space as if they had some right to do so.

  Garak was following, but Odo didn't care. He plunged toward the Klingons, then drew up short and kept his arms at his sides.

  "May I help you?" he asked, not in a very accommodating tone.